Recently, Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology has been breaking boundaries worldwide. Finds such as the Mesolithic house at Howick, the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome, and the recently discovered footprints at Happisburgh all serve to indicate how archaeologists in these fields are truly at the cutting edge of understanding humanity’s past. This volume celebrates this trend by focusing on recent advances in the study of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic. With contributors from a diverse range of backgrounds, it allows for a greater degree of interdisciplinary discourse than is often the case, as the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic are generally split apart. Wild Things brings together contributions from major researchers and early career specialists, detailing research taking place across the British Isles, France, Portugal, Russia, the Levant and Europe as a whole, providing a cross-section of the exciting range of research being conducted. By combining papers from both these periods, it is hoped that dialogue between practitioners of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology can be further encouraged. Topics include: the chronology of the Mid-Upper Palaeolithic of European Russia; territorial use of Alpine high altitude areas by Mesolithic hunter-gatherer; discussing the feasibility of reconstructing Neanderthal demography to examine their extinction; the funerary contexts from the Mesolithic burials at Muge; the discovery of further British Upper Palaeolithic parietal art at Cathole Cave; exploitation of both lithics and fauna in Palaeolithic France; and an analysis of Mesolithic/Neolithic trade in Europe.

Scholars working in a number of disciplines – archaeologists, classicists, epigraphers, papyrologists, Assyriologists, Egyptologists, Mayanists, philologists, and ancient historians of all stripes – routinely engage with ancient textual sources that are either material remains from the archaeological record or historical products of other connections between the ancient world and our own.Examining the archaeology-text nexus from multiple perspectives, contributors to this volume discuss current theoretical and practical problems that have grown out of their work at the boundary of the division between archaeology and the study of early inscriptions. In 12 representative case-studies drawn from research in Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean, and Mesoamerica, scholars use various lenses to critically examine the interface between archaeology and the study of ancient texts, rethink the fragmentation of their various specialized disciplines, and illustrate the best in current approaches to contextual analysis. The collection of essays also highlights recent trends in the development of documentation and dissemination technologies, engages with the ethical and intellectual quandaries presented by ancient inscriptions that lack archaeological context, and sets out to find profitable future directions for interdisciplinary research.

Deer have been central to human cultures throughout time and space: whether as staples to hunter-gatherers, icons of Empire, or the focus of sport. Their social and economic importance has seen some species transported across continents, transforming landscape as they went with the establishment of menageries and park. The fortunes of other species have been less auspicious, some becoming extirpated, or being in threat of extinction, due to pressures of over-hunting and/or human-instigated environmental change. In spite of their diverse, deep-rooted and long standing relations with human societies, no multi-disciplinary volume of research on cervids has until now been produced. This volume draws together research on deer from wide-ranging disciplines and in so doing substantially advances our broader understanding of human-deer relationships in the past and the present. Themes include species dispersal, exploitation patterns, symbolic significance, material culture and art, effects on the landscape and management. The temporal span of research ranges from the Pleistocene to the modern day and covers Europe, North America and Asia. Papers derived from international conferences held at the University of Lincoln and in Paris.

Over 150 years of research in the Circum-Alpine region have produced a vast amount of data on the lakeshore and wetland settlements found throughout the area. Particularly in the northern region, dendrochronological studies have provided highly accurate sequences of occupation, which have correlated, in turn, to palaeoclimatic reconstructions in the area. The result has been the general conclusion that the lake-dwelling tradition was governed by climatic factors, with communities abandoning the lakeshore during periods of inclement conditions, and returning when the climate was more favourable. Such a cyclical pattern occurred from the 4th millennium BC to 800 BC, at which time the lakeshores were abandoned and never extensively re-occupied. Was this final break with a long-lasting tradition solely the result of climatic fluctuation, or were cultural factors a more decisive influence for the decline of lake-dwelling occupation?Studies of material culture have shown that some of the Late Bronze Age lake-dwellings in the northern Alpine region were significant centres for the production and exchange of bronzework and manufactured products, linking northern Europe to the southern Alpine forelands and beyond. However, during the early Iron Age the former lake-dwelling region does not show such high levels of incorporation to long-distance exchange systems. Combining the evidence of material culture studies with occupation patterns and burial practices, this volume proposes an alternative to the climatically-driven models of lake-dwelling abandonment. This is not to say that climate change did not influence those communities, but that it was only one factor among many. More significantly, it was a combination of social choice to abandon the shore, and subsequent cultural developments that inhibited the full scale reoccupation of the lakes.

In de archeologische praktijk wordt veel van de archeoloog in het veld gevraagd. Hij/zij is het welbekende schaap met de vijf poten. Naast de dagelijkse bureaucratische rompslomp blijft helaas vaak te weinig tijd over voor de archeologische inhoudelijke kant van het werk en dan dient de veldarcheoloog zich ook nog eens bezig te houden met “het profiel”. Dit boek beoogt de veldarcheoloog enig houvast te bieden bij de documentatie en interpretatie van “het profiel” en probeert een antwoord te geven op vragen die veel in het veld worden gesteld. Waarom is de bepaling van het koolzure kalkgehalte van een sediment zo belangrijk? Wat is het verschil tussen een rivierduin en een donk? Hoe en hoe snel ontstaat een podzol? Is een eerdlaag hetzelfde als een esdek? Bevat het profiel nog voldoende stuifmeelkorrels voor een zinvolle analyse? Wat zegt een EZ23 op de bodemkaart nu eigenlijk? In dit boek vind je het antwoord op bovenstaande en vele andere vragen.De schrijvers van het boek zijn beiden werkzaam als fysisch geograaf bij EARTH Integrated Archaeology. Wilko van Zijverden begon zijn carrière in de archeologie in 1993 en verzorgt daarnaast sinds 2007 onderwijs in de aardwetenschappen bij de opleiding Archeologie van SAXION in Deventer. Jos de Moor werkt sinds 2001 als fysisch geograaf in het archeologisch werkveld.

Deze bundel vormt de neerslag van de 1e Nederlandse Metaaltijdendag, gehouden op 18 oktober 2013. Hierbij werd een rijke doorsnede aan recent metaaltijdenonderzoek gepresenteerd, dat nu in schriftelijke vorm het licht ziet. Deze bundel bevat bijdragen over het grafritueel, de materiële cultuur, nederzettingspatronen en depositiepatronen van gemeenschappen uit de metaaltijden (brons- en ijzertijd) van Nederland. De Metaaltijdendag is een initiatief van de Stichting Metaaltijdenonderzoek Nederland (SMON), die zo een breed platform wil bieden aan een ieder met belangstelling voor de laat-prehistorische samenlevingen. Om de verhalen zoveel mogelijk toegankelijk te maken, biedt de Stichting de gelegenheid de gehouden lezingen te publiceren in een bundel. In die zin vormt deze publicatie de Proceedings van het jaarlijkse congres, maar ook andere bijdragen over de metaaltijden zijn welkom. Samengebracht in deze bundel raken de verhalen over, en interpretaties van, de laat-prehistorische samenlevingen verbonden.Deze publicatie biedt dan ook een fraaie dwarsdoorsnede van wat de Nederlandse brons- en ijzertijd te bieden heeft. Zowel recente ontdekkingen komen aan bod, als ook oude vondstmeldingen die – wanneer ze in een landschappelijke context worden geplaatst – verrassende inzichten bieden in de wereld van 3500 jaar geleden.

With Experiments Past the important role that experimental archaeology has played in the development of archaeology is finally uncovered and understood. Experimental archaeology is a method to attempt to replicate archaeological artefacts and/or processes to test certain hypotheses or discover information about those artefacts and/or processes. It has been a key part of archaeology for well over a century, but such experiments are often embedded in wider research, conducted in isolation or never published or reported. Experiments Pasts provides readers with a glimpse of experimental work and experience that was previously inaccessible due to language, geographic and documentation barriers, while establishing a historical context for the issues confronting experimental archaeology today.This volume contains formal papers on the history of experimental methodologies in archaeology, as well as personal experiences of the development of experimental archaeology from early leaders in the field, such as Hans-Ole Hansen. Also represented in these chapters are the histories of experimental approaches to taphonomy, the archaeology of boats, building structures and agricultural practices, as well as narratives on how experimental archaeology has developed on a national level in several European countries and its role in encouraging a wide-scale interest and engagement with the past.

An understanding of textiles and the role they played in the past is important for anyone interested in past societies. Textiles served and in fact still do as both functional and symbolic items. The evidence for ancient textiles in Europe is split quite definitely along a north-south divide, with an abundance of actual examples in the north, but precious little in the south, where indirect evidence comes from such things as vase painting and frescoes. This volume brings together these two schools to look in more detail at textiles in the ancient world, and is based on a conference held in Denmark and Sweden in March 2003. Section one, Production and Organisation takes a chronological look through more than four thousand years of history; from Syria in the mid-third millennium BC, to Seventeenth Century Germany. Section two, Crafts and Technology focuses on the relationship between the primary producer (the craftsman) and the secondary receiver (the archaeologist/conservator). The third section, Society, examines the symbolic nature of textiles, and their place within ancient societal groups. Throughout the book emphasis is placed on the universality of textiles, and the importance of information exchange between scholars from different disciplines.

Animal Secondary Products investigates domestic animal exploitation and the animal economy from the Palaeolithic to the Bronze and Iron Ages across Eurasia (Europe, Near East, Siberia and China). Incorporating current zooarchaeological theory and cutting-edge methodological developments, it critically assesses Andrew Sherratt’s concept of a Secondary Products Revolution that proposed that a package of new subsistence practices and technologies swept across much of Eurasia at the end of the Neolithic, which triggered large-scale changes in economies and settlement across the landscape. This model argues that these changes were associated with a genuine shift from an emphasis upon domestic animals for their primary (meat hide, bone) products to a more diversified exploitation pattern which included their secondary (milk, wool, traction) products. Sherratt’s model attempted to conceptualise the changes between the Neolithic and Bronze Age that dramatically transformed the nature of animal exploitation strategies, cultivation practices, land management strategies, nature of settlement, and political and economic organization in Europe and the Near East that set the stage for the evolution of historic land use and animal exploitation patterns. Though setting the parameters for debate within the discipline for over 30 years, science has moved on and many kinds of new data, methods and techniques have been proposed since then that allow greater insights into these issues.In this volume, thirteen papers present a holistic discussion of Sherratt’s concept and investigate the theoretical development in our understanding of the origins of milking, wool production, transhumance, as well as examining the need for a contextualised zooarchaeological analysis and harvest profiles from various international sites in order to reconstruct the nature of Secondary Products exploitation. It also extends the secondary products concept across the Old World into Siberia and China and back in time to the Palaeolithic with the domestication of dogs. Through reviewing artefacts and textual evidence, the book bridges an important divide by cross-referencing statistical and scientific data with more traditional archaeological techniques and demonstrates the necessity of using many techniques to analyse data before interpreting patterns as exploitation practices. Offering fresh insight into the development of civilisation from the Neolithic and Bronze and Iron Ages in the Near East, Europe, and China, this book will be important for archaeozoologists and prehistorians.

There are many recoverable aspects and indications concerning medicine and healing in the ancient past – from the archaeological evidence of skeletal remains, grave-goods comprising medical and/or surgical equipment and visual representations in tombs and other monuments thorough to epigraphic and literary sources. The 42 papers presented here cover many aspects medicine in the Mediterranean world during Antiquity and early Byzantine times, bringing together both internationally established specialists on the history of medicine and researchers in the early stages of their career. The contributions are grouped under a series of headings: medicine and archaeology; media (online access to electronic corpus); the Aegean; medical authors/schools of medicine; surgery; medicaments and cures; skeletal remains; new research in Cyprus; Asklepios and incubation; and Byzantine, Arab and medieval sources. These subject areas are addressed through a combination of wide ranging archaeological and osteological data and the examination and interpretation of philosophical, literary and historiographical texts to provide a comprehensive suite of studies into early practices in this fundamental field of human experience.

Textiles were a hugely important Roman industry yet, because of their perishable nature, only fragments remain. These twenty-two essays provide a detailed study of surviving fragments from across the Roman world, from the dry sands of Egypt to the Atlantic coast and the northern frontiers and beyond. The result is a comprehensive reconstruction of both everyday and exotic Roman clothing with information about the influences of fashion and of Roman weaving techniques. Written by friends and colleagues, the contributions are offered as a tribute to John Peter Wild whose own studies of Roman textiles have been the inspiration of so much recent work.

In this book an analysis of over 300 animal bone assemblages from English Saxon and Scandinavian sites is presented. The data set is summarised in extensive tables for use as comparanda for future archaeozoological studies.Animals in Saxon and Scandinavian England takes as its core four broad areas of analysis. The first is an investigation of the diet of the population, and how food was used to establish social boundaries. Increasingly diverse diets are recognised, with high-status populations distinguishing themselves from other social sectors through the way food was redistributed and the diversity of taxa consumed.Secondly, the role of animals in the economy is considered, looking at how animal husbandry feeds into underlying modes of production throughout the Saxon period. From the largely self-sufficient early Saxon phase animal husbandry becomes more specialised to supply increasingly urban settlements. The ensuing third deliberation takes into account the foodways and interactions between producer and consumer sites, considering the distribution of food and raw materials between farm, table and craft worker. Fundamental changes in the nature of the Saxon economy distinguish a move away from food renders in the middle Saxon phase to market-based provisioning; opening the way for greater autonomy of supply and demand. Finally, the role of wics and burhs as centres of production is investigated, particularly the organisation of manufacture and provisioning with raw materials.

La présente étude propose une approche technologique de la céramique rubanée, au travers de l’étude de huit sites localisés dans le quart nord-est de la France et en Belgique (5300-4900 av. J.C. ). Les études typologiques de la céramique rubanée avaient abouti à une perception plutôt homogène des assemblages et l’analyse des décors avait permis la mise au point de séquences chronologiques particulièrement précises. Pourtant, plusieurs questions restaient en suspens, en particulier sur le contexte de production des vases, ainsi que sur l’origine des producteurs de la céramique dite du Limbourg, présente en petite quantité sur certains sites de la zone d’étude, qui se distingue de la céramique rubanée par une forme et un dégraissant spécifiques.Dans chacun des villages étudiés, il semble que la production céramique ait eu lieu à l’échelle de la maisonnée, bien qu’il ne soit pas possible d’exclure des formes de coopération entre maisons voire entre villages. La mise en perspective chronologique et spatiale des résultats technologiques à l’échelle intrasite permet de supposer que les dynamiques d’implantation des producteurs à l’échelle locale différaient d’un site à l’autre. À l’échelle macro-régionale, une distribution préférentielle des différentes traditions techniques dans certaines régions de peuplement a pu être observée, parfois tout au long de la séquence. Cette répartition pourrait suggérer des contacts privilégiés entre certaines zones de peuplement rubané, qu’il s’agisse de la circulation de savoir-faire, de récipients ou d’individus.L’étude technologique des vases Limbourg révèle des manières de faire variées. Il est possible d’opposer un Limbourg « standard », dont les caractères formels et techniques sont homogènes et dont la distribution est transrégionale à un Limbourg « imité ». Les vases Limbourg « imités » présentent des caractères formels typiques du Limbourg « standards », mais ils ont été façonnés selon des traditions majoritairement employées pour la réalisation des vases rubanés. Ce résultat original permet d’envisager que les vases Limbourg avaient un statut tout à fait particulier pour les communautés rubanées et conduit à formuler plusieurs hypothèses sur l’identité de leurs fabricants.

People are drawn to places where geology performs its miracles: ice-cold spring waters gushing from the rock, mysterious caves which act as conduits for ancestors and divinities traveling back and forth to the underworld, sacred bodies of water where communities make libations and offer sacrifices. This volume presents a series of archaeological landscapes from the Iranian highlands to the Anatolian Plateau, and from the Mediterranean borderlands to Mesoamerica. Contributors all have a deep interest in the making and the long-term history of unorthodox places of human interaction with the mineral world, specifically the landscapes of rocks and water. Working with rock reliefs, sacred springs and lakes, caves, cairns, ruins and other meaningful places, they draw attention to the need for a rigorous field methodology and theoretical framework for working with such special places. At a time when network models, urban-centered and macro-scale perspectives dominate discussions of ancient landscapes, this unusual volume takes us to remote, unmappable places of cultural practice, social imagination and political appropriation. It offers not only a diverse set of case studies approaching small meaningful places in their special geological grounding, but also suggests new methodologies and interpretive approaches to understand places and the processes of place-making.

Archaeoastronomy and the Maya illustrates archaeoastronomical approaches to ancient Mayan cultural production. The book is contextualized through a history of archaeoastronomical investigations into Mayan sites, originating in the 19th century discovery of astronomical tables within hieroglyphic books. Early 20th century archaeological excavations revealed inscriptions carved into stone that also preserved astronomical records, along with architecture that was built to reflect astronomical orientations. These materials provided the basis of a growing professionalized archaeoastronomy, blossoming in the 1970s and expanding into recent years. The chapters here exemplify the advances made in the field during the early 21st century as well as the on-going diversity of approaches, presenting new perspectives and discoveries in ancient Mayan astronomy that result from recent studies of architectural alignments, codices, epigraphy, iconography, ethnography, and calendrics. More than just investigations of esoteric ancient sciences, studies of ancient Mayan astronomy have profoundly aided our understanding of Mayan worldviews. Concepts of time and space, meanings encoded in religious art, intentions underlying architectural alignments, and even methods of political legitimization are all illuminated through the study of Mayan astronomy.

The Tortugas shipwreck excavated at a depth of 405 meters in the Straits of Florida contained a major collection of 3,800 intact and fragmentary olive jars, tablewares, cooking vessels and tobacco pipes. Identified as the Portuguese-built and Spanish-operated 117-ton Buen Jesús y Nuestra Señora del Rosario, the ship’s Seville dominated tablewares are a revealing index of unchanged cultural tastes and continued production at the end of Spain’s Golden Age. For cooking the crew relied on Afro-Caribbean colonoware, possibly the first recorded archaeological evidence of maritime slavery in the Americas fleets. Two tin-glazed plates painted with papal coat of arms – the Keys of Heaven and triple crown – may have been used by Spain-bound clergymen from the newly formed Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith. Samples of all ceramics were subjected to Inductively-Coupled Plasma Spectrometry (ICPS) analysis to determine vessel origins.Six chapters focus on the tablewares, tin-glazed papal plates, Afro-Caribbean cooking wares, the olive jars, Inductively-Coupled Plasma Spectrometry results, and a study of how the pottery reflects Spanish colonial economic models, also compared to Roman and medieval structures.